Arctic Regions in 1998

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The Arctic regions may be defined in physical terms (astronomical [north of the Arctic Circle, latitude 66° 30′ N], climatic [north of the 10° C (50° F) July isotherm], or vegetational [above the northern limit of the tree line]) or human (the territory inhabited by the circumpolar cultures--Inuit, or Eskimo, and Aleut in North America; Saami, or Lapp, in northern Scandinavia; and, west to east, Uralic, Paleosiberian, Middle Asian, and Arctic peoples in northern Russia). No single national sovereignty or treaty regime governs the region, which includes portions of seven countries: Canada, the United States, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Green-land (part of Denmark). The Arctic Ocean, 14,090,000 sq km (5,440,000 sq mi) in area, constitutes about two-thirds of the region, the remaining land area consisting of permanent ice cap, tundra, or taiga. Population (1999 est.) of peoples be-longing to the circumpolar cultures, more than 400,000 (including more than 200,000 in Russia). International organizations concerned with the Arctic include: the Arctic Council, the International Arc-tic Science Committee, the Barents Euro-Arctic Council, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, and the Saami Council. The Association of Indigenous Minorities of the North, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation represents the interests of the 31 indigenous peoples of northern Russia.

Late in 1997 Gov. Tony Knowles of Alaska announced the first new North Slope oil field in 10 years. The Badami oil field, located about 55 km (1 km = 0.62 mi) from Prudhoe Bay, was owned by BP Ltd. The field’s recoverable reserves were estimated at 120 million bbl and were expected to produce up to 30,000 bbl of oil a day during its 25-year life. Construction of the site injected $200 million into the Alaskan economy, and the state was expected to receive $350 million in royalties during the life of the field.

Under a controversial plan announced in August 1998, almost two million hectares (1 ha = 2.47 ac) in the National Petroleum Reserve on Alaska’s North Slope would be reopened to oil and gas leasing. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt indicated that the government was seeking to achieve in the reserve a balance between protecting sensitive environmental areas that provide habitat for caribou, grizzly bears, and birds and allowing drilling on land that industry believed was rich in oil. The nine million-hectare reserve was created in 1923 to ensure that the U.S. Navy had access to oil in a national emergency. According to industry estimates, it may hold between 400 million and one billion barrels of oil, far less than the Prudhoe Bay oil fields to the east.

The plan did not affect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, farther east along the Beaufort Sea coast. In May a U.S. Geological Survey report increased the mid-range estimate of oil under the refuge to 20.7 billion bbl, up from the 13.8 billion bbl previously reported in 1987. The increased estimates were based on data from drilling sites outside the refuge, new computer analyses of seismic data collected in 1987, and the impacts of improved oil-recovery technologies that reduced the cost of production and the adverse environmental effects.

In August it was reported that a Canadian company, Foothills Pipelines Ltd., had committed itself to a 22% interest in a new pipeline project--the Alaskan North Slope Project Sponsor Agreement. The multibillion-dollar project would involve the building of gas-conditioning facilities on the North Slope, a 1,300-km pipeline to Valdez, a gas-liquefaction facility, and tankers to transport the gas to markets. The agreement was seen as an encouragement for future northern natural gas development in the western Canadian Arctic. Governor Knowles pointed out that Alaska’s North Slope was endowed with an estimated one trillion cubic metres of natural gas (1 cu m = 35.3 cu ft). He indicated that the project would create an estimated 10,000 construction jobs as well as 600 permanent jobs operating the pipeline and other facilities.

In September the Yukon News reported on a meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, of the Northern Forum, a nongovernmental organization of 22 regional governments--territories, prefectures, provinces, and counties--from across the Arctic. Among the problems discussed were air pollution in the polar regions; reindeer herding in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia; the management of fish stocks that were being depleted in Norway, Alaska, and Russia; forest-management issues in northern Sweden and the Yukon in Canada; tourist development; exchange programs for students; and the possible creation of an international Arctic development bank.

The government of the Northwest Territories (NWT) in Canada laid out its vision for administering the western portion of the NWT after the eastern portion became a separate political entity--called Nunavut--in April 1999. The controversial proposal was for a new kind of "partnership government" between native leaders and the territorial government to govern the western NWT as equal partners. The proposal also called on the Canadian government to transfer control of oil, gas, and minerals to the people who lived in the North. The fact that the NWT government might eventually become unrepresentative of all the people in its territory--split evenly between the native and nonnative population--went to the heart of one of the most sensitive issues in the North.

In a judgment known as the Delgamuukw case, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in December 1997 that native people have a constitutional and historic right to their ancestral lands and that governments cannot override that right without appropriate consultation and compensation. The court also ruled that oral history--information and knowledge passed from generation to generation--must be regarded as serious evidence in determining native claims. One result of the Delgamuukw case was that the Inuit and other native people of Arctic Labrador and Quebec were able to challenge governments successfully concerning the development of several large projects, including the nickel mine at Voisey Bay being developed by Inco. Ltd. and the proposed $12 billion development of the hydroelectric potential of the lower Churchill River in Labrador.

The $19.5 million Project SHEBA--short for Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean--ended in mid-October, one year after the Canadian Coast Guard ship Des Groseilliers had rammed its way 200 km into the Arctic Ocean ice pack. The icebreaker was allowed to freeze there as a floating research station while as many as 15 crew and 45 scientists from Canada, Japan, The Netherlands, and the U.S. conducted experiments in temporary buildings set up on the ice surrounding the vessel. The study’s main purpose was to look at the impact of global warming on the polar ice pack, half of which freezes and refreezes each year. Some scientists predicted that if the Earth heated up by means of global warming, the ice could vanish. Other SHEBA studies found that the Arctic Ocean was more productive than scientists had predicted and that mercury, one of the contaminants measured, was found in snow at 20 times the level found in southern Canada. During its year-long drift Des Groseilliers traveled 11-19 km a day.

New atmospheric and scientific data reported in September were consistent with computer models that predicted that higher latitudes would be disproportionately impacted by higher temperatures. For example, while summer temperatures were 4.86° C (2.7° F) above normal across Canada, they were more than 9° C (5° F) above normal in parts of the NWT. These higher temperatures matched other data recorded throughout the world. The Yukon News reported in August that global warming would likely prove detrimental to the native subsistence economy. Trapping, for example, would be affected because prime fur requires freezing temperatures, which were now occurring later in the winter, when there is little daylight.

Following an international agreement reached in Scotland in June, Greenland closed its commercial salmon fishery, cutting off an industry that caught a large number of fish as they headed home to Canadian rivers. This was the first time in history no commercial fishermen were allowed to catch Canadian salmon in the eastern Arctic. Canada had previously shut down the commercial fisheries on its east coast. The closing down of these fisheries was estimated to have saved approximately 25,000 salmon in 1998.

A British explorer, David Hempleman-Adams, achieved the last leg of what was called the "adventurers’ grand slam" when he completed a 965.5-km journey on foot to reach the geographic North Pole at the end of April. He previously had climbed the highest peaks of all seven continents and had reached three of the four poles, magnetic and geographic, both north and south. He and his Norwegian trekking partner, Rune Gjeldnes, completed the journey on skis 54 days after leaving their starting point on Ward Hunt Island in Canada’s Arctic.